This invention relates generally to social networking, and more specifically to communicating information about other users' responses to invitations to an event to a viewing user.
Social networks, or social utilities that track and enable online connections between users (including people, businesses, and other entities), have become increasingly prevalent. In particular, social networking systems allow users to associate themselves with other users to create a web of connections among the users of the social networking system. For example, users may establish connections with each other based on one or more common attributes in user profiles, such as, geographic location, employer, job type, age, musical preferences, interests, online games, or other attributes.
Some social networking systems also include tools that allow users to calendar events to coordinate activities with other users. In addition to providing event scheduling for the users involved, in the social networking system context, these calendaring tools also serve a socializing function of informing other users of the activities of their contacts. Often, a user creates an event by identifying a location, a time and a guest list of other users invited to the event, and a social networking system disseminates invitations to the event to other users. The social networking system receives responses from the other users to allow the creating user to determine who will be attending the event. Additionally, the social networking system may also generate and maintain a page associated with the event, allowing users to exchange information with each other via the page or to identify other users invited to the event or planning to attend the event in a convenient location.
However, many social networking systems use a page associated with an event to merely identify lists of users and their planned attendance to the event. While this provides a user with information about the event, the information provided does not account for a user's relationships with other users. For example, rather than identify other users connected to an invited user on the page associated with the event, conventional techniques merely provide a listing of users attending, possibly attending or invited to the event. While this provides some information about the event to the user, the information does not account for the user's relationships with other users, which may significantly influence the user's decision to attend the event.